Saturday, July 14, 2012

With a suitcase full of Jane Austen novels en español, Amy
Elizabeth Smith set off on a yearlong Latin American
adventure: a traveling book club with Jane. In six unique, unforgettable
countries, she gathered book-loving new friends— taxi drivers and
teachers, poets and politicians— to read Emma, Sense and Sensibility,
and Pride and Prejudice.

Whether sharing rooster beer with Guatemalans, joining the crowd
at a Mexican boxing match, feeding a horde of tame iguanas with
Ecuadorean children, or tangling with argumentative booksellers in
Argentina, Amy came to learn what Austen knew all along: that we're
not always speaking the same language— even when we're speaking
the same language.

But with true Austen instinct, she could recognize when, unexpectedly,
she'd found her own Señor Darcy.

All Roads Lead to Austen celebrates the best of what we love about books
and revels in the pleasure of sharing a good book— with good friends.

I consider
myself a Jane Austen fan (I don’t think it matters that I have yet to read Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park) so when I got the chance
to read All Roads lead to Austen, A Year Long Journey With Jane by Amy Elizabeth Smith I was really excited. Happily,
this book did not let me down!

I found that
I was really interested in Smith’s life and wanted to find out how this
yearlong trip changed her personally as well as academically. To me, a great
travel memoir mixes fiction and research or travel commentary equally. I want
to hear all about the exotic locations but I also want to know what’s going
through the writer’s mind and all the personal issues they deal with too. I
also like it when it reads like a story instead of a textbook. All that being
said, I thought this book is a great example of a good travel memoir. I have
never been to any countries in Latin America, and likely never will, so it was
awesome to read about Smith’s adventures. She not only described the scenery
but the culture and how she struggled with some things while she was abroad
(including dengue fever – ugh! – and different Spanish dialects). As a side note, I’ve also decided I want a
tame iguana. I think he would be quite at home in Canada!

I thought
Smith came up with such an awesome and unique research project. I love the idea
of taking something that’s so familiar in your own culture, and something (or someone,
in the case of Austen) that has such a mass following all over the world, and
seeing what others think of it. I loved seeing what Smith found out about how
Austen translates – literally and culturally. Can you imagine reading the first
line of Pride and Prejudice in
another language? I think it would be quite strange (PS the first line is: “It is a truth universally acknowledged,
that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”). Smith learned that other cultures do take something
slightly different away from Austen but there were still some similarities,
such as immediately comparing Austen’s characters to people in their own lives.

All Roads Lead to Austen has encouraged me to not only get
around to reading those last two Austen novels but to also check out more
travel literature. This is an interesting read for any Austen or travel fan!